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Showing posts from April 23, 2020

You had to be there (foreign-language humour)

One of the most difficult things to 'get' in a foreign language is humour. In case you did not understand the title of this blog, it is a reference to something people say when a joke is not found funny by the hearers. In other words, background information ('being there') is required in order to find something funny. Often jokes function by saying something unexpected. Here's my first joke for today. Two Irishmen are talking and one says to the other, "What do you think about the Covid 19?" His friend answers, "Ach, they are probably innocent; they should all be set free." This joke - in case you don't 'get' it - is based on several high-profile court cases in the United Kingdom, when groups of men, designated as 'the Birmingham Six' or 'the Guildford Four' etc., were accused of terrorist crimes and later exonerated (found not guilty). The joke is based on someone thinking Covid 19 is another such case of wro...